Goodlatte calls for ‘targeted’ border funding

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said on Sunday that Congress should pass “targeted” emergency funding to respond to the border crisis, particularly in boosting resources to detain the unaccompanied children and sending them back to their home countries.

The Virginia Republican also urged President Barack Obama to meet with leaders of the Mexican government to stress what their country can do to help stem the crisis of minors trying to enter illegally through the Texas border, such as securing its own southern boundary with Guatemala.

There’s an “awful lot that the president can do right now without any [congressional] action,” Goodlatte said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Obama has not sent a strong enough message to children and their parents in Central America that if the minors come here illegally, they will not be allowed to stay, said Goodlatte, a frequent critic of the 2012 directive from Obama that allowed young undocumented immigrants who grew up in the United States to be effectively shielded from deportation.

“I would definitely pass emergency funding targeted for what is necessary,” Goodlatte said, before criticizing Obama for allocating too much money toward transporting the migrants further inside the United States and caring for them. “That, I think, is what the American people don’t like to see, because they know it is not deterrence,” he said.